Primary Menu

Tag Archives: Music

Flutter.iois a smart little app with a lot of potential in it. (Gizmodo covered it here). Simply put, it uses your webcam to help pause and play spotify and/or iTunes. The app works pretty well so far, and the novelty (and connivence) is worth it for price of entry alone. This feels like an area of gesture that hasn’t been explored that much, which leads me to think that the app has a lot more to bring to the party than just putting your palm in front of the camera and playing/pausing apps. So it’ll be interesting to see where this goes. (On a side note Flutter, your website isn’t much to shout about, the getty images vibe is not cool. Please sort accordingly…)

More great work combing music (from the band Mathon) and gesture technology to create a multi-touch sound visualisation. There are some nice touches here, and is a cool example of how technology and music are converging in more and more diverse ways. Would love to have a play of this, but for now, we’ll just have to work with the video above.

So, what about the experience of ‘making’ this album? Well, the website is a lovely piece of interactive work (especially the way you plug the cables into each track – cute), and you have to respect and applaud the thinking and innovation behind the idea. It has you intrigued enough to be willing to take the time to indulge in the experiment and listen to the songs. It’s not as devastatingly simple as Radiohead’s pay what you want initiative for In Rainbows, but then again, they a universally lauded band and probably could afford to take a greater financial and critical risk (not including the £40 deluxe packs and all that jazz that were released after). Alas for the The Kaiser Chiefs they are loooooooong way from critical darling level and frankly, have been on the wane for years, so it’s going to be tough road back. Hence why I respect the embracing of the unknown.

Will this musical experiment reverse that decline? Possibly, it certainly will gain them exposure, but you have to wonder how many people beyond a hardcore might participate in this. I would actually like to see this do well, beyond what I personally think of the music. (It’s a bit…. meh, with a few interesting highlights, that I naturally selected in my own album attempt), the really cool bit here is the disruptive model, and the collaboration. Letting your fans feel like they are participating in some of the most crucial elements of building a great album (songs and pictures) heralds another level of engagement. Let’s hope there’s enough fans, both old and new to make it a success.